Shaping Tokyo: Land Development and Planning Practice in the Early Modern Japanese Metropolis Carola Hein Bryn Mawr College, [email protected]
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Bryn Mawr College Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College Growth and Structure of Cities Faculty Research Growth and Structure of Cities and Scholarship 2010 Shaping Tokyo: Land Development and Planning Practice in the Early Modern Japanese Metropolis Carola Hein Bryn Mawr College, [email protected] Let us know how access to this document benefits ouy . Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.brynmawr.edu/cities_pubs Part of the Architecture Commons, History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons, and the Urban Studies and Planning Commons Custom Citation Hein, Carola. "Shaping Tokyo: Land Development and Planning Practice in the Early Modern Japanese Metropolis." Journal of Urban History 36, no. 4 (2010): 447-484. This paper is posted at Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College. http://repository.brynmawr.edu/cities_pubs/20 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Shaping Tokyo: Land Development and Planning Practice in the Early Modern Japanese Metropolis Carola Hein Manuscript submitted to the Journal of Urban History in August 2007, revised and resubmitted March 2008. When German architect Bruno Taut drove in 1936 along the major road linking Tokyo and Yokohama, he criticized the inadequacy and superficiality of the modernizing Japanese built landscape. He later wrote about his revulsion: "I in particular had heard so much about Tokyo that I had no desire to see the city on the spot. […] In passing through the Inland Sea we had absorbed scenery of such rare beauty, had found so little of vulgar trash 1 in such buildings as could be glimpsed, that we could hardly take in the crabbed pretentiousness, the ludicrous would-be modernity of the tin façades that confronted us, could not fathom the loud hideousness of this confusion of architectural styles. What had become of the refined vision of the Japanese, whose scenery was so admirably fitted to sensitize the optical nerve? The general impression was one of intolerable garishness. In the course of our travels we had only too often come up against civilization in decay. But this utter aimlessness, this total lack of direction even in bad taste, did more than shatter our illusions about Japan; it lacerated our finer feelings.” […] We drove through Ueno, an unspeakably hideous quarter built up after the big earthquake of 1923. Here the miniature sky-scrapers and six story buildings became less frequent, though only to be replaced by flatter monstrosities. 1 (Fig. 1) Visitors from Europe or America, who often lauded traditional Japanese architecture and urban form, had similarly criticized Japanese contemporary cityscapes since the mid-19th century. They deplored their lack of a clear structure, and regretted the absence of a visual relation between the infrastructure and the buildings. They could not discern any unity in the appearance of the streets, and they objected to the variety of functions and forms, materials and styles displayed in the façades. They also criticized the so-called "pencil buildings" (multi-story buildings on tiny sites), the narrow gaps between buildings (which they found more rural than urban), and the apparent lack of building control. 2 Taut, like other European and American planners before and after him, tried to change the appearance of Japanese cities through projects and publications to make it more orderly and similar to European cityscapes (where—ideally—buildings punctuate and accompany streets and public spaces to provide three-dimensional 1 The original translation has a note at the asterix: “The word “trash” is used here for every artistic expression of a sentimental, weak, sweetish, superficial and imitative kind. It is used with the same meaning as the German word “kitsch” and Japanese “ikamono” and “inchiki”. 2 urban vistas and where building codes regulate architectural forms). He never attempted to understand the traditional Japanese city on its own terms; nor the pressures of local development; nor the main Japanese political, economic, or planning actors; nor these actors’ attempts to modernize the city in harmony with its existent form and quality. 3 Indeed, while foreign attempts to change Tokyo largely failed, the Japanese elite experimented with foreign planning concepts and transformed the city. This article explores how Japanese leaders responded to the demands of modernization, specifically why they established planning practices that were different from those of their foreign counterparts even though they faced similar situations, knew about established European techniques, and had large open spaces available. It explores how Japanese leaders proposed and partly adopted large-scale remodeling following the model of Haussmann’s transformation of Parisian in the mid 19 th century—integrating street widening, lot adjustment, and building regulations. Through the examination of case studies it shows that while many built spaces seemed random and organic to outsiders, they were the result of comprehensive planning and adaptation to local needs. This article argues that the Japanese developed planning tools that built on the country’s own urban form, particularities in land ownership, development needs, urban planning techniques, and design preferences, integrating only selected aspects of foreign ideas. As I have discussed elsewhere, Japanese traditions—of machi (meaning neighborhood as well as small town), local self-management, and absence of metropolitan- scale planning—influenced the ways in which modernizing Japan transformed its cities and picked up foreign concepts through the 19 th and particularly in the 20 th century. 4 While the larger context of this modernization has received scholarly attention, few details are known about the transformation of individual urban units or the techniques that Japanese leaders and their planners used at this level. This article highlights, first, key issues of land ownership, urban form, and urban development in the Edo- period (1603-1867), and provides an overview of the urban transformation of Tokyo concentrating on the era from the early Meiji period (1860s) to another moment of modernization, the reconstruction after the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake. That earthquake destroyed large parts of Tokyo and Yokohama, and became a sort of test of urban modernization, as leaders of the reconstruction only respected those changes that satisfied the requirements of the modernizing city. Allowing for trial and error, it also helped Japanese planners, businessmen, and politicians devise the planning method that has determined Japanese urban planning since the 1920s. Second, this article provides a detailed analysis of the 1860s-1920s urban transformation. It examines the elements set up in the overview more closely through the study of three areas of Tokyo—all located in proximity of the imperial palace, a key site in the transformation of the city, but otherwise differing substantially—concentrating specifically on changes in the built environment following the construction of new or improved street infrastructure. This section showcases the particularities of Japanese urban form at a time when land ownership was not yet fully settled, and highlights the elite’s pragmatic approach to urban transformation rooted in existing patterns. It discusses how planners developed techniques based on traditional 2 3 tools to help Tokyo, and other Japanese cities, quickly adapt to modernity, while selectively appropriating techniques from Europe. Finally, it underlines the importance of land readjustment , a planning technique characterized by a reduction in lot sizes in order to create public land, and to widen and straighten out streets, plots, and blocks. These case studies demonstrate that even when given the opportunity for large-scale design, leaders made pragmatic decisions, concentrating their comprehensive plans on infrastructural and zoning questions, while ignoring European ideas about creating monumental urban gestures, regulating streetscapes, or imposing building guidelines. Even when Tokyo planners used zone expropriation , a favorite policy among Europeans for rearranging urban land (it allowed planners to adjust building lots and building frontages in conjunction with street construction, and rarely found support in Japan), the result did not differ much from less involved remodeling in other areas. Put another way, large-scale plans were rare; when leaders did attempt them they rarely proposed comprehensive urban design paired with building regulations; and even then these plans generally failed. In conclusion, this article argues that Japanese planners developed a practice that departed from European and American design principles, but one that was and continues to be appropriate for Japanese needs and one that might even offer lessons to foreign cities and planners. Early commentators criticized the chaotic appearance of Japanese cities, but recent practitioners and scholars have come to appreciate their distinctive patterns, and the livable, multi-functional neighborhoods that include inspiring features in terms of sustainability and community planning. 5 Traditions of landownership, urban form, and urban development in Edo/Tokyo: From the Edo period to the reconstruction period after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake Tokyo’s population, land use, streetscapes, and legal structures of land ownership differed significantly from European practices well into the 20 th century, due to the shogunal system.